Challenge to PL’s Sustained Yield Plan Coming to Trial
After almost four years of delays and legal maneuvers, Pacific Lumber and the state agencies that approved PL's logging permits in the infamous Headwaters Forest "deal" will finally face the legal challenges to the deal brought by environmental groups in March 1999. The Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) and the Sierra Club are seeking a court injunction to invalidate the Incidental Take Permit, Sustained Yield Plan (SYP), and other permits approved by the California Department of Forestry (CDF) and the California Department of Fish and Game that have given PL carte blanche to log the critical habitat of marbled murrelet, coho salmon, and other old-growth dependent species. . The trial is scheduled to begin March 24 in Humboldt County Superior Court before Judge John Golden.
The defendants’ clever legal ploys and failure to provide a complete administrative record to the court succeeded in keeping the case from coming to trial while PL forged ahead with logging its old-growth redwood and Douglas fir forests, much of which is occupied marbled murrelet habitat. In late August, Judge Golden ordered PL to immediately halt all logging operations on its 211,000 acres carried out under the permits being challenged by EPIC and the Sierra Club to avoid causing irreversible harm to imperiled wildlife and public trust resources before the merits of the case could be heard. In a display of unabashed corporate arrogance, PL ignored the court stay and continued logging at a break neck pace in the Mattole, areas immediately adjacent to two tree-sitters in Freshwater, and other fragile watersheds. PL claimed that prior CDF approval of its logging plans exempted them from the court injunction. The company's court filings show they logged approximately 1 million board feet per day since the order was issued, the equivalent of over 200 logging trucks daily.
PL’s Sustained Yield Plan outlines how the timber company intends to conduct sustainable logging operations over a 50-year period (clearly an oxymoron in PL’s case). An Incidental Take Permit, which PL obtained as part of its HCP approved with the Headwaters Deal, is essentially a permit to kill endangered species. The lawsuit also challenges 1603 permits issued to PL by state agencies allowing alteration of streambeds and stream crossings.
